What is NEPA vs. CEQA?
Senior Environmental Scientist Christa Redd explains NEPA vs. CEQA in about 90 seconds.
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The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, were enacted in the same year to ensure that agencies and decision makers understood the environmental impacts of their decisions.
While they are similar in goals, they do have several differences. NEPA applies to any project or action that has some form of a federal nexus, such as it's on federal land, it's got federal funding, or it has some form of federal oversight, like an approval or a permit. A NEPA document not only identifies the adverse effects to the environment, it also provides mitigation measures known as environmental commitments. However, a NEPA document and a project can move forward even with significant adverse effects as long as those are disclosed in the document.
CEQA is a bit more broad and applies to any project that has a discretionary action by either a local or a state agency, so any kind of approvals or permits or oversight or funding. Under CEQA, the significant impacts must be disclosed. However, if there are significant impacts, those impacts must also have mitigation measures that are enforceable and measurable in order to reduce the impacts and lessen the significance. If the impact remains significant, then the decision makers must also adopt a statement of overriding considerations to explain why the project should move forward.